EP 1007 I don’t have a lot of contacts or connections. What should I do?

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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, all as well as executive job search coaching and life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us and click the relevant tab on the top of the page.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYbwaVxZC_s[/svp] Does your employer have the right to ask you why your resume is on job boards when they find it through sourcing of candidate?

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves life coaching, as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio” and “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” both available through iTunes and Stitcher.

Are you interested in executive job search coaching, leadership coaching or life coaching from me? Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us and put the word, “Coaching” in the subject line.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I on function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Do you have a question you would like me to answer? Pay $25 via PayPal to TheBigGameHunter@gmail.com and then forward your question to the same address.

EP 876 What happens when you meet someone who sells so hard you feel pushed into a corner. Here, I translate this into an interview setting.

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves life coaching, as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.”

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching or interview coaching from me? Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us and put the word, “Coaching” in the subject line.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Whether you are a newbie looking to land your first job or a seasoned professional looking for greener pastures, leaving a positive impression during the interview is key to getting an offer. With countless applicants competing for the same job, it can be difficult to stand out. Let’s put this into perspective: every corporate job attracts around 250 resumes, but only around six people are called in for an interview.

In addition, many people make the same mistake: not asking any questions. You’re so worried about answering questions that you forgot to ask a few of your own. So, here are seven fool-proof questions to help you become more unforgettable. But first, let’s take a detour and explore some of the things you stand to achieve just by asking your interviewers the right questions.

Three Things You’ll Achieve by Asking Your Interviewers the Right Questions

Depending on how the interviewer answers the questions, you will be able to gauge whether the company is really a good fit for you or not.

In asking questions you in a way demonstrate your level of interest in the company.

Asking questions can eliminate any reservations that the interviewer may have about you prior to the interview.

Seven important questions to ask during your interview

1.What is the one problem that you would like me to help solve?

One of the perks of asking this question is that it helps you to not only get a glimpse of the challenges that you are bound to face in the position you are applying for but also shows that you are a problem solver who is immediately thinking of how you can help out. And this more than anything else helps encourage the interviewer to in the very least envision how things would be like if you joined the team.

2.What does one need to do to be a success in this position?

Asking this question not only gets you ahead, but also exhibits your interest in successful employment with this company. And, this is an essential trait that just about any interviewer will be on the lookout for during recruitment.

Employers understand the cost of a bad hire, but perhaps in more of a broad way. Many small-to-midsized businesses do not have the resources to make bad decisions when hiring. So, they try to tailor their interview process to ensure only the right candidates get through.

Nonetheless, when you ask the right questions, you convey that you are one of the job seekers who really wants the position and is willing to learn more about the daily details and how to get it.

3.Do you offer continuing education and professional training?

If you’re thinking about a positioning question, then this is definitely your best bet. It shows that you are vested in expanding your knowledge and ultimately growing as the company grows. After all, no one really wants to stagnate at one point for much longer than is necessary.

4.What’s next after the interviews?

As much as asking this question may seem a bit forward especially because no one is ever really sure whether they’ll pass the interview or not, it shows that you are committed to the process and are interested in moving along in the process. And if you’re lucky, it may also invite the interviewer to tell you just how many more contenders there are for the said position.

5.What types of skills and background would the ideal candidate need for this position?

Have you ever been in an interview and felt like you might have missed out on some important detail when profiling yourself? Well, this question helps you redeem yourself in the event that—in your nervousness–you missed something. It helps the interviewer lay everything on the table in terms of what the employer is looking for. As a result, it gives you an edge just in case there’s something you didn’t cover.

6.What objectives would need to be accomplished within the next 30 or 90 days in this job?

Asking this question will give you an opportunity to find out exactly what you will be expected to contribute to the organization from the moment you start working. It is basically meant to prepare you psychologically for the task ahead as well as help the interviewer determine just how ready and realistic you really are.

7.Do you have any reservations about my qualifications?

I know what you’re thinking right now. Gutsy! Right? Well, this question would give just about anyone the chills. And most people find it hard to ask it because they are not really sure if they’ll be able to take the answer. However, on the flip side, it also helps exhibit confidence in your skills and abilities.

In Conclusion

Since many interviewees forget to ask key questions, you will already stand out by asking one or all of the inquiries above. With these foolproof questions, you might even get a positive response immediately after your interview. Make sure to keep your phone on hand!

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, all as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.”

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us and click the relevant tab on the top of the page.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Job hunters make a critical mistake at final interviews. There is something missing from the recipe.

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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, all as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.”

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us and click the relevant tab on the top of the page.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

If you have not been watching HBO’s series, “Game of Thrones” you have been missing an exceptional series on HBO. As I write this, I am still catching up and have not seen the final episode of the series yet. It is well written, engrossing and has multiple plot lines working concurrently in this medieval story of competition between different houses of the realm for control of the kingdom.

Like “The Sopranos” before it, there is a lot of intrigue and many betrayals (if you have been watching the series, you know I am being very gentile in describing it).

Here are a few lessons you can learn from the show that you can apply in your job search and in your career:

1. Never let yourself get talked into a job you know you don’t want. By far the biggest lesson offered, Lord Stark is persuaded by his friend, King Robert, to accept a role as “The Hand (like being chief of staff with the full authority to act as The King). Lord Stark never wanted to the role but did it as a favor to his great regret.

2. Be careful with choosing your allies when you join.As you would expect in a series like this, there is much intrigue at court and many people betraying others to gain power and influence that are not immediately apparent to Stark. By gambling that honesty and honor will b powerful enough to win the day, Stark places his life and that of his family at great risk. This leads to our third point.

3. Not everyone will be completely honest with what they tell you. Whether it is the HR person who has been in meetings to plan layoffs, the hiring manager who seems perfectly nice but is in fact a micro-manager or the recruiter who seems nice enough but is about to be fired unless she “closes a deal in the next two weeks,” every person you may meet when being interviewed may have an ulterior motive and not your interest at heart.

4. Have an exit strategy in place. Without a plan, Lord Stark is trapped by his principles. Abandoning them at a particularly important moment at the encouragement of one of his daughters, he and his daughter learn that when you trust a tyrant, you will eventually be crushed. Never trust a tyrant to keep their word!

5. Sometimes being lucky is a good thing.One of the characters is the outcast son of the patriarch of “the evil family.” He is forced to be in the vanguard of the soldiers sent into battle with “the good family.” A dwarf (or as he is sometimes referred to in the show, “an imp,” he gives a rousing speech to the men he will be joining and as the rush to battled, he is knocked unconscious by the club one of them is carrying to fight with. Although almost all of the these soldiers are slaughtered, he lives.

Watch the series on HBO or the DVD’s when they are available. It’s hard to explain but completely engrossing tv.

Frustrated: disappointed; thwarted: an announcer who was a frustrated actor.

Thwarted: to oppose successfully; prevent from accomplishing a purpose.

I do career coaching and often people ask me for advice about how to handle situations with colleagues. In this case, the situation presented to me was about how I might handle the “know-it all” who is doing something wrong and wants to be told that they are doing it right.

“I started to ask him about his use case when my boss stepped in and started to argue with them that they were doing it all wrong. All that happened is that I became frustrated as the two of them argued and nothing changed.”

In case you haven’t noticed, no one responds well to an argument that translates into “You’re wrong and I’m right.” The proof is in how many people were persuaded to change their minds about who to vote for (or against) in the last election.

After all the insults of political candidates, insults of people who supported a particular candidate, memes, etc., the number of people who changed their mind about who to vote for in the US could probably be counted on two hands. It is no different in the workplace or with your family. No one like to be told directly or indirectly something that translates into, “What are you stupid? What are you thinking? Where are your brains?”

All that happens is that one person or the other feels frustrated—thwarted in their desire to win. We expected to win because we were “right” in our minds. Their ideas have been held at bay.

What the words, “frustrated” and “thwarted” don’t address is how we emotionally respond as a feeling. What I have seen is that when we feel frustrated we become angry and direct that anger at ourselves because it would be wrong to direct it at the other person because there would be bad consequences.

Maybe you would be brought in for a meeting and told that what you did was wrong. Maybe it would affect your promotion, salary increases or bonus. Pretty quickly we learn that anger at others can’t be expressed at work so we still are still angry but hold it in and feel angry at ourselves.

There are many layers that people experience in episodes like this. Male know it all and female coworker. US born know it all not listening to non-US born co-worker who really just wants the best for him. Superior subordinate. White vs. non-white. Two white male superiors arguing and ignoring a female subordinate of a different nationality and race who only wants the best for the situation and actually knows better than either how to achieve it.

Lots of different subplots in the story that all lead to frustration. Anger. Anger held in. Anger that eventually becomes self-directed by three people.

How could it have been handled differently?

I think everyone could have approached it differently.

When dealing with a “know it all,” any questioning can be interpreted as criticism. Thus, when asked about a “use case,” this person sensed criticism was coming and put up his guard.

Better to have asked, “I’m curious, why did you take that approach? I would like to learn your thinking because I would have approached it differently and I need to learn from you.” Notice an acknowledgement that a difference would have existed and an invitation to explain choices.

Maybe “The Know It All” Does Know Better

After all, maybe, just maybe, the alleged “know it all” actually knows better that the supposed expert. Hasn’t that happened many times in the past? One side knows better than the supposed expert what they want and what needs to happen to satisfy them. Rather than demanding compliance with a structure that doesn’t work for the people who are forced to operate in it, it is better to hear them out and learn their point of view.

In addition, the playing field has been leveled between what are seeming combatants and there is an invitation to explain choices and reasons for decisions. The alleged expert can listen and learn as long as she is legitimately curious and acts like someone who wants to help them.

When her boss steps in and escalates the level of hostilities, she can say to him, “We are having a good discussion here and an opportunity to hear from someone who is affected by our work. Let me handle this and circle back to you if I need your expertise.”

Thus, she is able to defend the “know it all,” indicate that she is fine and, if her boss ignores her respond by saying, “I guess I’m not needed here,” and extricate herself from the warring armies having made an ally while respecting her boss’s authority.

Speaking to you who are managers, directors, VP’s, leaders in an organization, you need to learn to trust your people, rather than signal your distrust. A great response would have been, “Let me know if I can help.” That would have been inviting to both parties rather than turn things into a duel.

Who’s The Key Person in This Story?

We all know that not everyone is reasonable and that we all have days when we are “off.” When you think about this situation, the key person here is the SME, the real expert, who has to practice taking charge of situations and not allow herself to be run over by deflecting the attack into a legitimate desire to help while acknowledging that she would have approached the solution differently.

Why not ask questions, be quiet and listen. It might actually work in some family situations, too!

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked in recruiting for what seems like one hundred years. He is the head coach for JobSearchCoachingHQ.com and NoBSCoachingAdvice.com. He is the host of “The No BS Coaching Advice Podcast,” “No BS Job Search Advice,” and “Job Search Radio.”

Jeff Altman The Big Game Hunter explains why giving your resume to someone who works for a company you want to target may not be the best way to get an interview.

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves life coaching, as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.”

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us and put the word, “Coaching” in the subject line and tell me about your circumstances in the body of the email.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

“One of the greatest handicaps is to fear a mistake. You have stopped yourself. You have to move freely in the arena, just not to wait for the perfect situation, the perfect moment . . . If you have to make a mistake, it is better to make a mistake of action than one of inaction. If I had the opportunity again, I would take chances.”

~Federico Fellini

I enjoy an occasional piece of bacon. I like sausage more but great bacon is something special for me. I live life as a bran guy and that shows up in how I have managed my career. I have been careful and cautious making very few jobs changes (5 companies in 40+ years) before moving into coaching.

That was a big change because it was all on me. I couldn’t lament that the firm that contracted for me was not providing adequate resources or that my co-workers were difficult. All choices are mine. But the funny thing is that they always were mine. I just wasn’t paying attention.

I was always pretty good at recognizing trends early. I bought my first computer in 1983 and included a modem to communicate with people in the pre-Internet days. I am LinkedIn member 7653 because I spotted something in the idea that was intriguing.

When I started my first search firm, I started to network with other recruiters in New York and did very well sharing fees with others. For those of you in IT, this was a time when “hot technology” was OS/COBOL and firms were starting to use CICS. Yes, it was a long time ago.

One of my affiliates called me one day and started to lament, “I’m going out of business. I have all these great OS/COBOL people and clients want them with CICS.” “Well, get them with CICS”

“But I have these great OS/COBOL people!”

“Who cares? Your clients sure don’t.”

He was out of business within 6 months of our call.

Folks, many of you have “safe careers” that will be replaced by AI.

How many of you have even considered the potential impact of artificial intelligence on your work?

I am pretty confident that even if you have thought about it for the 30 seconds or so most of you think about things, you have done nothing to start looking ahead to make plans for yourself and your career.

AI is still in its infancy and there is a lot ahead that will still need to be sorted out. Listening to a podcast recently, I heard one vendor firm discuss intelligence was now looking at videos to recognize truthfulness and confidence in what is being said. Decisions were being made as a result of this. Your answers to interview questions on video are being used to compare your answers with those of successful performers in their firm. You may delight in thinking that recruiters will be wiped out by this (they won’t) but trust me when I tell you that the same firms that sent jobs offshore (almost all) will be using AI to eliminate many of those jobs and yours.

If you are younger than 50, you need to be alert to the dynamics in your field because many of you will be obsolete in the next decade or so based upon AI/Machine learning.

Don’t think it can happen to you?

I remember having to go to a bank and stand online to hand a check to a teller who manually verified my signature by looking at my signature card and deciding that it matched and then cashed my check. We now don’t like interacting with tellers, preferring the convenience of machines.

Being bran won’t help you be safe. Thinking bacon will. The choice shouldn’t be safe or sorry. There are other choices you have, too.

And don’t worry about professional cholesterol. You will wind up in the same place if you play it safe with professional bran instead of trying the sizzling professional bacon.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves life coaching, as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.”

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching from me? Maybe you want me to critique your resume and/or LinkedIn profile or help you with a negotiation. Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us and order and schedule time with me.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves life coaching, as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.”

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching or interview coaching from me? Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us and put the word, “Coaching” in the subject line.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.